To receive certain goods or services an order may be placed with a supplier. In the case of computer software, an order may be placed and the goods delivered in response to the order. Alternatively, the computer software customer places an order for the right to make a certain number of copies of one or more titles of computer software. Once the "order" is placed, the customer has the right to make the copies specified in the order. As used herein, the term, "order" is expanded to include such an order for the right to make additional copies of computer software, and any request to use goods or have services supplied. As used herein, the term "product" is intended to mean any good or service.
Each order for products may contain various types of products. For example an order for computer software may contain an order for various titles of computer software directed to a supplier.
Some orders for products are discounted based on a volume related to the amount of products in the order. If a certain volume of products is ordered together, a volume discount applies. A larger discount may be available for orders of larger volumes. The discount is calculated by determining the highest volume discount threshold that does not exceed the volume of the order. For example, orders with a volume of at least 50 might receive a 10% discount, and orders with a volume of at least 100 might receive a 15% discount. The thresholds are 50 and 100.
The volume of an order may be calculated based on any of a number of factors. For example, the volume may be based on the non-discounted dollar value of the order. The volume may be based on a number of products ordered. The volume may be based on a number of units ordered, with each product counting for a predetermined number of units, referred to as a weight. The complexity of the discount structure is heightened by the fact that each vendor of products may implement a discount structure that uses different volume and threshold calculations different from other vendors.
Because of the complexity of the discount structure of each supplier, a customer may not be aware at the time an order for goods and/or services is placed that a moderately larger order can increase the discount available. The customer may be willing to increase the order, ordering more than is needed for example, so as to realize the additional discount, if the customer knew by how much it was necessary to increase the order to realize the additional discount. Because there may be multiple ways of increasing an order to realize additional discounts, it may be necessary to calculate multiple increased orders, making the identification of additional discounts a complex, time-consuming and error-prone task. Because of the time involved in calculating multiple increased orders, many customers may forgo the increased discount available by increasing an order. In some cases, the additional discount would be almost as much or even more than the cost of the additional products required to achieve the added discount. Had the customer known of this fact, additional products could have been ordered at little or no added cost.
There exists a need for a method and apparatus to identify how to increase an order for goods or services to realize additional discounts.